


sunrise

by jeannedarc



Category: VIXX
Genre: M/M, sad garbage tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-02-01 05:28:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12698307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeannedarc/pseuds/jeannedarc
Summary: He’s waiting. He’s wanting. He’s hopeful.





	sunrise

**Author's Note:**

> this is not what i started this morning and tbh i wrote it in like an hour and a half so hopefully i got everything right to the best of my ability  
> happy birthday to [my kiddo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/subsequence) (part one)  
> the story comes from a song i like (and have liked for a long, long time) but i'm loathe to post it here lest i be called traitorous or, worse yet, Hipster Trash

Morning has, as of late, been a dull, monotonous affair, now that the sunshine has left the vicinity. He wakes up. He takes a good, long piss. He brushes his teeth, his hair, more often than not skipping the shower he knows he so desperately needs. He makes himself the same breakfast he always does. He watches the news.

He’s waiting. He’s wanting. He’s hopeful. 

It’s been weeks since he’s seen Hakyeon, and though he’s loathe to admit it to himself, he’s praying that they’ll be reunited sometime soon. The chances, they both knew upon Hakyeon’s departure, were slim at best. In his heart of hearts, Sanghyuk knows that even if he and Hakyeon _were_ to see each other again, there would be no good circumstances involved. Impossible. He scoffs at the thought. How fucking ridiculous can he be?

Even still, he’s hopeful.

It’s a Tuesday morning when it happens. He’s watching the first run of news in the morning, 4am, sipping cold coffee leftover from the day before, eyes tired and unfocused on the screen, all blurry and grainy and last-generation technology. He couldn’t sleep. He hasn’t slept well since...well, since. His hands are wrapped around his cup, shaking, thoughtless and inconsiderate; he drums his nails against the ceramic, the threat of a sigh at his mouth. The glow of the television is the only light in his entire apartment (unless he’s to count the streetlight across the way, poking its glare in between his patio blinds; he doesn’t, because it’s starting to give him a headache).

It’s practically a human interest piece, what with how it’s garbage, how no one in the studio takes it seriously, but he sees it and his heart absolutely stops.

That face, when it flashes across the screen - he has to pause it, of course, and in still it looks even worse, almost mangled to unrecognisable - is covered in blood, in bruises, in wounds that look as if they’ll take ages to heal. But he recognises it.

Hakyeon.

He hasn’t moved so fast in so long he couldn’t tell the last time, and his heartbeat thuds so loud in his chest it feels a threat to national security. He is going to the embassy, to the place where people accused of espionage are kept.

It’s the right thing to do.

For once, his hope has not been misplaced.

\---

Six months ago, Sanghyuk was just getting started at his new job, working in the science department at the local university. He did R&D - alternative energy, something to improve the world. He was bright-eyed, looking forward to making a positive impact, all smiles and pride. His parents called every day just to brag about how they got to rub their son’s success in the face of someone else whose kid who wasn’t doing as well as Sanghyuk (at which he chuckled, outwardly humble as ever, trying to keep himself from bristling, attesting to the fact that he deserved this more than anyone else he knew - all the sleepless nights through undergrad, then post-grad; all the stress; the early grey he hid as best he could; the weeks of going without eating a proper meal).

Everything was going well. He only had to put in two years’ work here, but it was his dream. He had achieved every single thing he wanted to do with his life. Time to make new dreams, he supposed, writing out formulae until his hands cramped and his brain spun interminably with numbers.

He looks back now and really, everything comes down to choices and outlying circumstances. He would never have, on any other day, eaten in the campus cafeteria, preferring to work through lunch with a sandwich in hand - the benefit of working in a non-medical science, he supposed - but the night before had been an all-or-nothing deal, and he’d slept a few hours on the couch in the adjacent lab (at the invitation of a rather flirtatious superior whose advances he’d rejected). As a result he had nothing to eat.

So he made his way down to the cafeteria, lost in the sheer selection - would he like this sandwich? Would soup be a better option? Which would get him back upstairs and into his office quicker? - when someone literally ran into him, smearing his tie with chicken salad and cranberry.

Sanghyuk looked up, then down at himself, then up again. He couldn’t tell which had been more embarrassing - how absolutely gorgeous the man who had run into him was, or the fact that said man had a napkin in his other hand and, abandoning his plate, had started to wipe the mess of chicken and mayo and fruit off Sanghyuk’s front without a second thought.

“I’m so, so sorry,” said this man, in a voice, high, cloudy, enticing, and Sanghyuk knew right then and there that he was completely, irrevocably, one-hundred percent screwed.

\---

The embassy is a crowded place considering the fact that it’s five-thirty in the morning. By crowded, it should be noted, there are more than a handful of people there, apparently a lot of them wanting to get whatever business there is to be done early. Sanghyuk glances around, looking for someone he knows, someone Hakyeon has introduced him to over the past couple months. Nothing. A dead end. He’s about to give up completely, give up on this absolute wild goose chase - it’s not like he has any money for a lawyer, or any power in a place like this - when someone taps him on the shoulder from behind.

“Come with me.” It’s a complete stranger, a short, heavyset woman with a serious look to her thick brows and thin mouth, but she gestures him to follow, and he dips his head in agreement, trotting along, trying to keep pace with her smart clip out of the main lobby and down an echoing hallway.

He’s taken to a room, completely anonymous, and what a terrible world it is when he realises that he’s being held for something. There’s only one door in or out of the room, the entire right wall made of mirror - one-way, he assumes, staring into his tired reflection - and a flickering EXIT sign is his only source of entertainment. He holds one hand in the other. He twiddles his thumbs. He waits.

It takes an hour or two, and when nothing happens and they let him go, he’s bewildered. Only when he reaches the outer gate of the embassy building does he see what he came for.

“Sanghyukkie!” calls out that voice, somewhere behind him and rather distant, and his entire spine is rocked with heavy shudders. He turns on his heel.

Hakyeon, bruised and beaten and beautiful, stands there as if no time has passed between them at all, posture casual, one thumb hooked in a belt loop.

“They caught you,” Sanghyuk breathes, but he’s moving faster than his brain can process, his feet carrying him as he closes the gap between himself and Hakyeon, wrapping his shaking arms around the elder and holding him close in spite of wincing and whimpering and protests to the contrary.

“No,” whispers Hakyeon, “they never caught me at anything. No one ever has.” He furls his fingers in the hem of Sanghyuk’s shirt, wrinkling it beyond recognition, and if Sanghyuk didn’t know any better he’d swear the crook of his neck is wet with Hakyeon’s tears.

\---

“So what is it you do?” Hakyeon asked, perching on Sanghyuk’s desk and stretching out his legs. It didn’t escape Sanghyuk’s notice how long they were, how perfectly shapely Hakyeon was, the slight flicker of his eyes as he looked around Sanghyuk’s lab.

“I, uh, help to come up with more efficient ways to use energy in everyday life. Making alternative energy more accessible to the general public. That kind of thing.” He rubbed at the scruff of his own neck, unfamiliar with speaking in specific about his own work; most people didn’t understand or, at the very least, didn’t attempt to. “There’s...a lot of applications to things like this.”

“Is that so?” Hakyeon’s eyes narrowed a bit, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth, and God, if he didn’t look like an angel in that moment, Sanghyuk wasn’t sure what one really looked like at all. “What kind of applications?”

“Well, there’s outreach to other countries...automobiles and things of that nature...there’s weaponry, too, but everyone else in the world is too stuck on nuclear power to really give much else a second thought…”

“Weaponry?” 

“Yeah, warfare. Not to mention general military application, working on making the military operations themselves more friendly to the environment. Bad enough soldiers in active duty leave shells and shrapnel lying around wherever they go, no reason to affect large-radius areas on the scale of bombings if it isn’t necessary…”

“Interesting.” Hakyeon draped one of his forever legs across the other, fingers wrapping tighter around the edge of Sanghyuk’s desk. “Can you show me something you’re working on right now?”

“Ah...classified. Our university is contracted out by the government. Technically you shouldn’t even be in here until work hours are over, except if I waited that long I’d never get to hang out with you.”

“Were you angling to hang out with me?” Hakyeon asked, sly, one eyebrow arched slightly. “I just want to know what I can. I’m not anyone important here, after all, no one’s gonna tell me anything if it isn’t you.”

He would never say it, but he thought about that the whole night and the whole next day and evening until Hakyeon came to visit him again.

“Here, let me show you something,” said Sanghyuk soon as Hakyeon entered his office. He wouldn’t know it until months down the road, but that smile Hakyeon wore was, in fact, a secret.

\---

Days after their meeting at the embassy, Hakyeon is hiding out in Sanghyuk’s apartment, waiting for his people to extract him, get him back to safety with the information he has. “You’re going to help them stop whatever it is that’s happening, aren’t you?” Sanghyuk asks at least once an hour.

Hakyeon, more often than not, shuts him up by climbing atop him, wrapping arms around his neck. “I’m doing what’s best for everyone,” he says, dusting his lips along Sanghyuk’s, fingertips pressing into his shoulderblades hard enough to bruise. He’ll be leaving any minute now, but right in this moment Sanghyuk is taking his sweet time watching Hakyeon’s face slowly heal.

He doesn’t talk about what happened, and he whines whenever Sanghyuk tries to give him any kind of first aid. “I’ll be fine, Sanghyukkie,” Hakyeon insists, but holds the bag of frozen peas to his cheek anyway. The swelling has gone down. The colour has grown darker.

“You’re still so gorgeous,” Sanghyuk says every single time the purple changes to black, then to mottled green. “The most beautiful person I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Hakyeon hangs his head low. “I’m just doing my job,” he insists, truly humble.

They spend more time naked than not, and Sanghyuk makes instant ramyeon, and they drink beer (well, Sanghyuk drinks beer, Hakyeon insisting on juice - “keeps these old bones doing the things they need to do,” he says, smiling a bit sadly), and they hold each other, Sanghyuk whispering sweet things into Hakyeon’s ear when he dozes off, the pain medication he only takes every once in a while, when he absolutely can’t take it anymore, knocking him clean out.

\---

For every secret Sanghyuk divulged, Hakyeon gave him something new, a tiny piece of himself. It always seemed bigger a slice of his own life than it actually was, something Sanghyuk never realised until it was far too late, but it wasn’t nothing.

After the first time, they went down to the campus gardens, sat on the stone benches, discussing the possibility of a better world. Hakyeon’s hand didn’t leave its spot on Sanghyuk’s knee for a long while, driving Sanghyuk to the point of distraction.

“Do you really think what you’re doing is going to make a difference?” Sanghyuk wasn’t sure, but he thought he detected a hint of irony in Hakyeon’s tone, in his smile, in the faint glint in his eyes, unreadable and untouchable.

“I really do,” Sanghyuk told him, honest, earnest, leaning in close enough that he could smell the cinnamon on Hakyeon’s breath.

They kissed for the first time that afternoon, Sanghyuk filled with nothing but the absolute essence of Hakyeon, up to the brim, up until he thought he might burst with it. Hakyeon’s lips were softer than Sanghyuk could have imagined, had he any imagination; his hands were rough, but his touch was gentle, and he was careful, so careful, in case Sanghyuk might have changed his mind. 

Sanghyuk, punch-drunk on falling in love for the moment, none-too-subtly suggested that perhaps they should take the...whatever it was back up to his office, but Hakyeon just shook his head. “Maybe next time,” he said softly, nose pressed to Sanghyuk’s, their lips a hair’s breadth apart. “I have a little work to do. But I’ll be back tomorrow.”

Tomorrow came and went, and another after that, before Sanghyuk saw Hakyeon again. But he sat patiently while Hakyeon asked myriad questions about how this bomb worked, how that energy source was best utilised, how people would function better as a whole if those were put into place. He had a working knowledge of chemistry, for which Sanghyuk was grateful, taking some of the pressure off himself - he’s never been a good teacher - but it mounted just the same the closer Hakyeon came.

“You’re incredible,” Hakyeon sighed, legs crossed and tucked between Sanghyuk’s knees. Sanghyuk stood, practically knocking Hakyeon off balance, and took the elder’s face between his palms, drawing him into a kiss full of passion, of wanting that Sanghyuk had kept tucked away for years of schooling.

They stumbled out of their clothes, into the next room, the unoccupied laboratory serving as a fitting scene for their first time together. Hakyeon was all gentle touches, taking great care not to push Sanghyuk too far, not to ask too much. Sanghyuk, however, was the opposite, rough, commanding even when he got to the floor, between Hakyeon’s knees, and gazed up at him longingly.

“Is this okay, hyung?” he asked quickly, tongue flirting at the head of Hakyeon’s mostly-hard cock, and Hakyeon nodded, threading his fingers through Sanghyuk’s hair and giving a soft tug of encouragement.

It was only later, when they were collapsed together on that couch, Sanghyuk’s arms fitted around Hakyeon’s waist, that Hakyeon chose to speak. “I shouldn’t have done that,” he murmured, flat, dead, the opposite of what he’d been just minutes before.

“Why not…?” Sanghyuk’s heart hurt at the implication, but he shrugged it off in favour of basking in this sensation, of being sticky with sweat and cum and worn-out anticipation that had him shaking with the afterglow of it all. 

“Because I’m using you for information.” Hakyeon laughed, then, a short bark of a sound that seemed forced. “Do you really think I’m interested in what you do? I’m just paid to collect data.”

Sanghyuk silenced Hakyeon with a kiss. “I don’t care,” he said in all his fey seriousness, “use me again if you need to. What do you need to know?”

\---

Eventually Hakyeon’s organisation comes for him, two men in suit and tie with matching sunglasses and briefcases, and they attempt to whisk him away.

Hakyeon, however, has never been so easily swayed. “Give me a couple hours,” he tells them with a dismissive wave of his hand, and these men exchange glances, but don’t ask questions, stand outside the apartment. Sanghyuk hates to think that they’re listening in, but it’s probably their job.

They don’t have sex, despite their best efforts, and end up sweating in a heap of limbs, wrapped around each other, lips to lips, heart to heart. It’s strange to think that this might be the last time they see each other.

Sanghyuk is left alone with the promise that Hakyeon will contact him, when he’s back on this side of the world. They both know it isn’t going to happen, that Hakyeon’s probably going to have to quit spying - being on the news works that way, after all, no matter how unrecognisable some might find one to be.

“I love you,” Sanghyuk says, when they’re at the door, fingers laced together and foreheads just barely kissing.

“I love you,” Hakyeon echoes, stealing one last kiss from Sanghyuk’s mouth. He’s always been a good thief, but Sanghyuk never thought Hakyeon would walk away with his heart in his hands.

He steps into the harsh fluorescent light of the hallway, and glances at his two collectors, each in turn. He looks over his shoulder at Sanghyuk. He flashes a smile, brilliant and bright despite the ugly shade of his face.

“Goodbye,” he says with a bow of his head.

“See you later,” Sanghyuk corrects, conspicuous, dipping his own head in return.

The collectors flank Hakyeon on either side as he makes his slow way to the stairwell. He gives one last look before letting the door close behind the three of them.

\---

Five years into the future, Sanghyuk will have moved on to another job, this time working directly for the government. Whatever Hakyeon had learned all those years ago had never come to pass, and Sanghyuk had never been considered a risk, and he will work in military development. He will not have changed the world. He will have someone new, a boyfriend who lives in his apartment and cooks his dinner, who makes art and ends every day with charcoal smudges on his face, who kisses him like he’s the only person worthy of being kissed and holds him despite Sanghyuk’s protests to the contrary.

He will not stop thinking of Hakyeon.

He will be walking to work - he still doesn’t drive, even this late in his life, not much seeing the point when it’s a few blocks’ stroll between his apartment and his office building - and nearly get mowed over by a car of foreign make.

He will recognise the driver. His heart will stop. He will be unable to speak. The car will continue moving, unaware of its error.

Hakyeon will drive away, again, always working on that perfect escape. He will look healthy and happy and Sanghyuk’s skin and bones and soul will ache with the memory of him, almost buried but not quite, now brought to the surface.

Sanghyuk will stare after this car as it retreats into the distance. He will well up with tears, but he will not cry. He will refuse to cry again.

**Author's Note:**

> i guess if you wanna annoy me about how much i'm Not writing go ahead and follow me on [twitter](http://twitter.com/takoyaken)


End file.
